


From Saigon, With Love

by ChocolatMoosePi



Category: Carmilla (Web Series), Carmilla - J. Sheridan Le Fanu
Genre: Angst, F/F, Vampire Laura Hollis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-23
Updated: 2015-06-23
Packaged: 2018-04-05 17:49:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4189233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChocolatMoosePi/pseuds/ChocolatMoosePi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reposted from Tumblr (oinkisaweirdword) now that my Hogwarts Letter from AO3 has come in to let me create an account :).</p>
<p>Laura and Carmilla have the "love" talk...sorta. Angst ensues, but Hollstein endgame. </p>
<p>Post S2E6.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From Saigon, With Love

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little ficlet inspired by all the hemming and hawing around the “love” accusation in S2E6, my personal (though not happy) headcannon that Carmilla and Mattie have had sex through the years (Maybe it’s just me? I dunno. I don’t want them to have, but…..), and that horrible picture that haunts us all, of Laura’s horribly heartbroken face.

The bed was quiet, its occupants curled amongst the sheets and each other as they thought on all that had transpired in the evening.

“I…I do, you know,” Carmilla spoke softly, Laura’s chin tilting upward slightly in curiosity as she crinkled the space between her eyebrows. Waiting for the other girl to continue. “…L-love you, I mean.”

There was a tiny, choked gasp from Laura, followed by an oppressing silence as neither spoke, and neither looked away from the other’s eyes. “You do?” Laura responded eventually, her voice vulnerable and small. Hopeful?

“Yeah. I do.” And they continued to stare. Laura’s lips parting, grasping for words, and closing again as they found they had none – repeating the process two or three times more before Carmilla spoke up again, hurried, “You don’t have to say it back or anything. It’s fine if you don’t…you know.”

The smaller girl’s face broke, “No, Carm…I care about you so much, and I think you’re just SO amazing…I’ve just only said those words to my Dad…and Mom, y’know? So this is really big for me, and everything with us is just so intense and complicated…it’ll just take a little time before I’m ready to say it, yeah?”

“Yeah, definitely. L-like I said – don’t even worry about it. It’s fine, really…..You don’t feel the same.. It’s fine.”

“No, that’s not it!” Laura jumped to respond, shaking her head,” It’s just…I’m not as naïve as you think I am, and I know how this goes… You’re immortal Carm, and I’m – not. And maybe we can ignore that for a few years, but pretty soon I’m gonna start looking older than you, and it’ll just be…there, like this horrible thing taunting us and tearing us apart, and we’ll grow to _hate_ each other and end it before it hurts too much, or we’ll stubbornly cling on while I keep getting older and older and wither and die, and leave you behind……” 

The girl’s words, having barreled forward with a desperate enthusiasm only she could manage, slowed. “Or you turn me, and we live together,” a small, bittersweet smile, “and I watch every person I love leave me behind. A-and I become that mysterious stranger that my dad and my friends hide away and make up lies about so that their friends and family don’t get too suspicious about that girl who looks kind of like that other girl who lived there so many years ago. But it can’t be her, cause ---“

“Cupcake, cupcake, stop….” Carmilla reached for her, stilling the body and the words as Laura’s tongue ran away with her, once more. “It’s fine. I understand, and we’re fine…”

A tense smile, shared. And they slipped into the silence, once more, Laura’s eyes beginning to close without her permission.

The bed shifted beneath them as Carmilla disentangled herself from the embrace, Laura jerking, and peering blearily at the girl beside her as she rose from the bed. “Where are you going?”

“Shhhh, it’s okay, Cupcake. Just go back to sleep – I’m just gonna do a little stargazing.”

Laura frowned, but slipped back into her slumber as Carmilla reached the threshold, pausing to peer back at the girl on the bed. “ _I love you._ ”

 

_____

 

Laura ran her hands through her hair nervously, twirling a single finger in the end of one curl. Shifting from foot to foot as she cradled the lilies gently. How the local florist managed to remain in business during the recent Silas turmoil was beyond her comprehension, but she had told Laura these flowers were called stargazers…So they seemed appropriate. “This is stupid,” she mumbled, scoffing to herself. _For fucks sake, the flowers were pink_. Groaning, she steeled her resolve, raising a fist to knock.

“Carm?” No answer. But a definite scuffling, a muttered curse.

Laura giggled to herself, softly, “Hey, I can hear you rustling around in there….I missed seeing you when I woke up this morning.”

The door creaked open, just wide enough for Carmilla to squeeze through and out into the hallway. She wore the robe from the morning before, though loosely tied, rumpled, and hanging off one shoulder.

“H-hi, creampuff… What’s up?”

“Oh! Uh nothing, really, I just wanted to give you these,” she thrust the flowers from behind her back, arm fully extended, “and I wanted to say……”

_“Carmilla, just get rid of the child already and come back to bed.”_

**Mattie.**

“L-laura,” Carmilla whimpered, “wait, it’s not---. I made a mista-.”

Glossy, yet hardened eyes. Lips parted in…surprise? Anguish? 

 

“It didn’t mean anything! I thought you were leaving me, I thought it was over, and-and I was gonna be all alone. I can’t be alone again, Laura. I’m always alone……Please.”

Pain turned to resolve. Almost assent… _No_.

“I just came to tell you I love you, too.” She choked. “Guess I’m a little late.”

_No. No, stay and fight._

“Laura.”

_Yell, hit me, rip the other woman’s eyes out._

“Goodbye, Carm.”

 

\-----

 

Carmilla returned to the bedside, shuddering and moving away again with a start as she felt the barely-there, possessive caress of fingertips down her bare shoulder. “Don’t touch me. Don’t ever touch me.”

 

\-----

 

Time had weathered on Carmilla, though not by appearance. To the eye she was yet another young, fresh-faced girl of another new age. Wise beyond her years, perhaps, but unremarkable even to those who thought to know her. Unattached, and disaffected. Dropping into lives for a handful of years at a time, then always on her way.

She strolled down the side of bustling traffic as any day, her eyes catching every passing wisp of honey-blonde hair, every lighthearted giggle in the breeze. Searching, even now. 

It was never her.

Even now, this girl who looked so much like her… But no – she would be long dead by now. Dust. 

And yet. That smile.

“L-lauraa?” She choked, “is that--”

“Carmilla.” The other girl acknowledged, her eyes guarded. 

“But _how_?”

“Mattie did it.” So matter-of-fact, “Not too long after I found you two – a few days, maybe. I was holed up at the Summer House, and she just walked in and did it,” she snaps her fingers, ”just like that.”

Carmilla winces as the motion cuts through the air, so detached from the words and unlike the girl making it. 

“She told me you were moping around without me, then rolled her eyes…killed me, and turned me.” An odd, _off_ sort of laugh. “I still can’t figure whether she was trying to do you a favor or just piss you off.”

The elder girl growls, somewhere deep in her throat.

“But once I got past the hunger, I waited. You never came after me… So I went back to my dad.” Even now, Laura knows how to talk. Carmilla has learned to listen. “I think he knew, right away. But he didn’t want to, so we didn’t talk about it. He lived a good, long life, too….We had people thinking I was his great-granddaughter, by the end…. And then Perry, and LaFontaine, and Danny, and Kirsch…. I had this little black cat for company for a while…reminded me of you… But after 24 years, even he gave up on me. 

“So here I am. Because I’m old, and tired, and I think you are too. So we might as well be old, and tired, and lonely, and forgotten together. That’s all love really is in the end, anyway…isn’t it?”

“I..I haven’t….been with anyone, since that night.” Carmilla speaks timidly, finding the statement to be stupid, trivial as soon as it passes her lips. The sentiment didn’t erase wrongdoings, lost time. She knew it didn’t.

Laura simply shrugged a shoulder, her manner offhanded, “And I have.” 

The taller girl swallowed jealously and bile she had no right to having, after all these scars and years and regrets. But seeing Laura the same as when she left her… it hurt despite the rights. 

Laura peered back at her, expression unreadable but for the slightest wavering at the corner of her lips. Eyes slightly shinier, though it may have been but for the steady, unbothered movement of the clouds from before the sun - the vampires shifted uncomfortably at the fresh tingling in their skin. Laura’s hand reached resolutely from her side, an offering to the woman before her. 

And the two grasped, and held on. 

_Another sort of tingling._ Pleasant? 

“Well come on then,” Laura started, clearing her throat, “I hear you’re out of practice, and I think I’ve learned a thing or two in these 182 years I can teach you.” 

Her wink felt foreign to Carmilla, not her. But then - she knew her for but a few months, so many years before. Strangers, really. 

But they were here, together, and her palm felt familiar and warm.

And - it was an understanding. It was _something._

(In due time, they’d admit that it was love.)

**Author's Note:**

> This is the kinda fic I'd hate to read, so I appreciate all of you who've made it through without hating me :)


End file.
